“This month is generally ushered in with boisterous wind and nipping frosts. The hapless mariner beholds his vessel wrecked upon the very rocks which bind his much-loved home. Vegetation perishes through severe and untimely ires!; and deluging rains, descending with impetuous force crush the springing blade, and despoil the beauty of the gay parterre. Even thus do the rude passions of man’s soul break forth with resistless force at this unsettled period of existence, wrecking the fragile bark of youth. The tide of dissipation sweeps away the principles of virtue, which have not had time to take root, and every noble energy is blighted by the influence of bad example.”

For all their necessity, American almanacs in the early nineteenth century assumed that most farmers understood, without printed confirmation, events such as the beginning of spring. Nonetheless, warnings such as the one above about the ravages of early spring weather, not to mention the unsettling effect it has on the “fragile bark of youth,” pervaded these sage documents. As evidenced here, spring fever was alive and well in 1824.

Attorney Andrew Beers acted as chief polymath for several almanacs in New York City before he moved to Albany in 1797. He began working with printers in western New York towns wanting to issue almanacs particular to their areas. Newspaperman and publisher James D. Bemis of Canandaigua, nine miles from the home of Joseph Smith, turned to Beers for help with astronomical, monetary and other calculations invaluable to local farmers and businessmen. Bemus was the editor of the Ontario Repository and Genesee Advertiser. Ontario County, New York was home to Joseph Smith and his family between 1816 and 1830.

“‘Let us have peace.’ The expressions of these kindly feelings were not restricted to a section of the country, nor to a division of the people. They came from individual citizens of all nationalieties; from all denominations — the Protestant, the Catholic, and the Jew; and from the various societies of the land — scientific, educational, religious, or otherwise. Politics did not enter into the matter at all.”

An ineffectual, if not disastrous, president, ruined by bankruptcy after being defrauded of his estate, and dying of throat cancer, Ulysses S. Grant, Union hero of the American Civil War, agreed to publish his memoirs. He needed the money to try to secure an economically stable future for his family.

Samuel Clemens, whose pen name was Mark Twain, served as his editor. In the last month of his life, Grant struggled to dictate his notes to a stenographer and managed to finish his memoirs shortly before his death. For Clemens, witnessing the tenacity of the dying man, Grant became, once more, a heroic figure.

The memoirs focused almost entirely on the old general’s actions during the war. Still considered among the greatest of military memoirs, the two volume set became an immediate bestseller, praised for its high literary qualities. Grant’s style was straightforward and compelling. Clemens compared the book to Julius Caesar’s Commentaries. Gertrude Stein admired the book and said that she could not think of Grant without weeping.

His Memoirs were a financial and critical success. Thousands of war veterans and their families made a ready market for the book. Grant’s family, who received seventy-five percent of the royalties, quickly re-established their fortune, receiving nearly a half million dollars from the book.

Catalog to accompany an exhibition of the same name at the Church History Museum in Salt Lake City. The exhibition is free and open to the public and runs through August 2017. An online exhibit is also available at history.lds.org.

“…if courage and endurance make a story, if human kindness and helpfulness and brotherly love in the midst of raw horror are worth recording, this…is one of the great tales of the West and of America.”
— Wallace Stegner, quoted in the Curator’s Essay.

“Frederick Piercy was the eighth of nine children born in Portsea, Hampshire, England. He joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on March 23, 1848, and a year later, he married Angelina Hawkins, also a convert. When Piercy was twenty and his wife was expecting their first child, he left for a short mission to Paris, France. In addition to proselytizing, he produced artwork and can be considered a predecessor to the Paris art missionaries who came years later.

“Piercy was an artist know for portraiture and landscapes, and he exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts and at the Suffolk Street Gallery of the Society of British Artists in London prior to leaving for the Salt Lake Valley. In 1853, then twenty-three years old, Piercy left England aboard the emigrant ship Jersey, which was headed for New Orleans. He and James Linforth, an editor for the Mormon newspaper Millennial Star, published a collection of engravings and woodcuts made from Piercy’s drawings, paintings, and journals in the book Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake Valley. Instead of remaining in Utah like many others, Piercy returned to England shortly after his trip. By April 1857, after refusing to return to the Salt Lake Valley at the behest of both Brigham Young and Orson Pratt, Piercy and his wife left the Mormon faith.”
— Laura Allred Hurtado

— New Beginnings, John Burton, 2016 oil on canvas, from Saints at Devil’s Gate

“I never shall forget the last day we traveled, and arrived in the Valley… When my eyes rested on the beautiful entrancing sight — the Valley; Oh! how my heart swelled within me, I could have laughed and cried, such a comingling [sic] of emotions I cannot describe…No doubt our valley looks astonishingly beautiful to the strangers who come here now, but it cannot evoke the same emotions as it did to us, poor weary tired, worn out, ragged travelers.” — Ann Agatha Walker Pratt

“Behind us now are the heart aches and many thousands of silent tears that fell on the long unknown trail.” — Mary Pugh Scott
–from Saints at Devil’s Gate